Subject: AUT: Class and other social divisions
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 09:41:24 -0600


This was from another list, but I wrote it and wanted some feedback to see
what people think.  I have had two basic reactions so far:

1.  I am dislocating the primacy of class.

2.  I am giving too many concessions to the 'class is primary' camp.

Kinda funny.  Can't please everyone or anyone I suppose.

Thanks in advance,
Chris


> I apologize if this is both too long and not long enough.  It is a sketch,
> an outline.  Please keep that in mind.
>
> There seems to be a barrier developing here, one which seems already
largely
> in place.  As a WDN supporter but not a member, I try to make very limited
> comments, but this is an extremely critical issue.  And more than most, it
> represents a key instance of the failure of traditional Marxism, whether
> Leninism in its many forms or other, less 'popular' and 'orthodox' brands.
> It is also a moment of complete failure of various nationalist-Marxisms of
> the Black Panther, League of Revolutionary Black Worker, Stokley
Carmichael
> type.  Also, for what it is worth, the various radical nationalisms drop
> dead here too, whether Puerto Rican Socialist Party politics or AIM or
Brown
> Berets.
>
> So where am I claiming that the entirety of the traditional Left is wrong
> and I am right (not alone, however, except on this list maybe)?  The
> intersection of class and non-class oppression.  In this case, it happens
to
> be race and class.  In another instance it might be gender and class or
> sexuality and class.  Post-modernism, post-colonialism, nationalism and
> feminism have had a field day over this juncture, not because they deal
with
> class so well (we know they have their heads up their asses on class for
the
> most part), but because they appear to deal better with race, gender,
> sexuality, etc.  They have nominally respected the real meaningfulness of
> these oppressions, they have explained them, and they have attempted to
> validate the people who live them.  "Nominally" because we all know that
the
> point is not to understand the world, but to change it.  The most
> devastating critique of such theories is that they all explain oppression,
> but none of them explain the weakness, the faultlines, of oppression.
These
> are theories 'of' oppression.  Marx fundamentally had a theory against
> oppression.  Minor sounding, major in practice.
>
> So what is the alternative?
>
> The main problem involves confusion about the very notion of class itself
> and the most fundamental separation of class society.  It isn't class.
Marx
> points out as early as 1844 in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
that
> alienated labor gives rise to class, not the other way around.  In Chapter
1
> of Volume 1 of Capital, Marx returns to this concept in slightly different
> fashion.  There he discusses the formation of the commodity and the
> separation of the producer from the means of producing, encapsulated in
> commodity fetishism in which relations between people appear as relations
> between things.
>
> The point?  Class is not the fundamental binary antagonism of capitalism.
> The separation of the producer from the means of producing is the
> fundamental binary.  Class is one manifestation of this binary opposition.
> Patriarchy is another manifestion, as home and work become separated,
> childcare and the provision of the means of childcare.  Whiteness is
another
> manifestation, grounded in the slave trade and New World slavery (which
> separated more than 10 million Africans from their means of production,
> their families, their societies, etc.) and in massive land theft and
> genocide against the  indigenous peoples in the Americas and Australia and
> other places.
>
> So you see, we cannot simply say 'Class is more important.'  Class is one
> moment, one form of existence of the separation of the producer from the
> means of producing.  If class has a greater importance, it is only in so
far
> as the separation of the producer from the means of producing appears most
> openly and, in most respects, in its least mediated form, at the point of
> production of commodities.  But the other forms of separation have greater
> or lesser weight at any given moment and are no less a part and parcel of
> capital's domination.  If we see class as a relation of antagonism between
> two poles, if we see class as that kind of separation, we also have to
> realize that patriarchy and race represent similar polarities,
representing
> different aspects of the capital-labor relation in more highly mediated,
> sometimes obscured forms.
>
> Assuming I am right about this, what are the implications?
>
> First, class is not more primal than race or patriarchy.  They are all
> points of crisis for the capital-labor relation.  The struggle agains the
> specific forms of oppression mentioned here all open fissures, crisis
> points, in capital's rule.  They are also not the same.
>
> Second, since they are not the same, we have to specify the ways in which
> the differences manifest themselves historically, their specific
historical
> compositions.  We can think of this in terms laid out by Italian
autonomist
> Marxism, as specific compositions of the capital-labor relation, existing
as
> the outcome of specific class struggles.  The struggles of any given
period
> will involve not simply class struggles, but racial and gender struggles,
> among others.  All of these seek in one fashion or another to overcome the
> fetishized, alienated social relations which express the specific
> expressions of alienated labor (which can be broadly understood as
alienated
> creativity, since Marx understood labor in the broadest possible sense.)
> This totality of struggles means that not class nor race nor gender exist
in
> the exact same way for each period, that the relations of classes,
genders,
> and races are recomposed, reinscribed, recreated.
>
> Third, as for race, this means that in 1830 the Irish are not white, but
by
> 1860 they are, not because of anything more than the way that capital
> imposed successfully, in struggle, the recomposition of Irish labor as
white
> labor.  The Native Americans and Africans are pretty much screwed from the
> start.  Chinese and Asian labor fairs marginally better.  Mexican labor
> would become something else very soon, especially with the end of European
> migrations to the U.S. in the 1920's, though that history goes back to the
> 1840's.  In 1905, Italians were not yet white.  By 1945, even though entry
> to the capitalist class is still partially blocked, within the working
class
> and petty bourgeoisie, Italians are white.  In fact, nowadays, thanks to
the
> slave trade, colonialism, and imperialism, the European immigrants are
often
> racist white supremacists before they walk into the United States.
>
> Fourth, what constitutes racial composition today is no more the same as
> what constituted class composition in 1845.  In other words, to think
about
> racial composition in the same terms as we did 150 or 100 or 50 years ago
is
> to be drastically out of step.  We have to come to terms with the racial
> composition of today.  For example, as a result of the Civil Rights and
> Black Power movements, there is a Black middle class which has adopted the
> 'ethnic' title of African American, which is largely employed in white-run
> corporations and is independent of the mass of Black people who work as
> workers or languish among the terminally unemployed.  Few African
Americans
> work field anymore, not even their own.  This is only one part of the
> transformation of racial composition, but I think it makes my point.
>
> Fifth, the struggle against race and patriarchy are struggles against
> capital.  Like it or lump it, racial struggles are not simply class
> struggles in the patronizing way most white radicals formulate the
question.
> In a very real sense, anti-racist struggles are anti-capitalist struggles.
> Each struggle has its own peculiarities and particularities, of course
> because each one represents a specific mainfestation of the capital-labor
> relation, which means that the struggles cross each other in odd ways.
This
> is why it is fair to say that class, race and gender struggles
> interpenetrate.  They in fact represent separate forms of existence of the
> capital-labor relation.  The impact to the separation of the producers
from
> the means of producing may not be as direct i.e. may be more highly
> mediated, but they are struggle against capital no less.
>
> Sixth, I say highly mediated because, being at the point of production,
> class most directly appears as the antagonism of capital and labor.  Race
> and gender do not always appear so direct and so lightly mediated.
However,
> race and gender intersect with class and mediate its antagonism, the
> relationship between workers as a hierarchy within the class, and as
> cross-class ties of solidarity.  All of this is based on the assymetrical
> power relations between racialized groups and gendered groups.  One group
> necessarily has more power than all of the others, and one group tends to
> make up the other end of the pole or the bottom as it were.  The space
> inbetween may be more or less mediated by composite formations (African
> Americans to Native Americans to Mexicans, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, etc. to
> whites) or it may be almost without middle terms (woman to man, though how
> one might think about homosexuality in this context could be productive.)
>
> Seventh, we then have to recognize, in my opinion, that the struggle for a
> unified class struggle may be illusory and counter-productive.  Our
strength
> may be in our difference, in our multiplicity, and in the recognition of
the
> power of a multitude of struggles against capital.  We do not have to
> collapse all the struggles into one unified consciousness (the party or
> 'real class consciousness'), and we could not.  We can, however, have
unity
> in practice and that may lead to greater unity in consciousness.  However,
> as long as capital exists, the basic separations will exist and the idea
of
> consciousness overcoming the material divisions between workers is pure
> idealism.  Exactly the kind of fairytale idealism that social democracy
and
> Leninism lean towards.
>
> Eighth, this means that demands for unity around 'class issues' are so
much
> nonsense.  Sure, in so far as most oppressed people are working class,
> 'class issues' will resonate.  But in so far as capital is also
experienced
> as racialized and as patriarchy, race and gender-specific politics will
also
> resonate.  And they will also resonate against white and male workers.  In
> so far as we struggle against those specific forms of alienated labor, we
> will also therefore fight against the genuine hierarchy within the working
> class.  We may in this way achieve in practice what we could not likely
> achieve in idealistic demands for 'unite and fight'.  Rather, one might
say
> that the fight is the precondition for the unite.  And the fight may very
> well begin with white workers.
>
> Ninth, in the non-class forms of oppression, one section of the working
> class plays a role in the oppression of other sections.  In other words,
> some workers, as white men, do play a role in the oppression of African
> Americans, Latinos, women, Native Americans, etc...  They are not the
source
> of the oppressive relation, but in return for their obedience to this
role,
> their own experience of exploitation is lessened and they are spared
certain
> forms of oppression, alienation, humiliation.  I will leave it to the
whites
> to argue over whether this amounts to privilege or 'less oppression'.  In
> the real world, they are the same thing and I prefer the bluntest, most
> direct words that don't downplay the situation.
>
> Tenth, phrases like 'white skin privilege' have deep inherent flaws.
First,
> it takes race to be a matter of skin color.  That is simply refying the
> racial categories and race's own story of itself, and we already know that
> race is a liar, so why buy this ticket too?  Btw, Richard is not the only
> one who thinks that race is really about skin color in some way.  Les fell
> into the same trap.  Second, white skin privilege has never been able to
see
> both sides of the equation clearly.  In the case of the politics of
> Sojourner Truth and Race Traitor, 'white skin privilege' has ended up
making
> race all about the white man again and making 'the end of white supremacy
> the precondition of social revolution'.  On that basis, workers of color
> have to wait for white people to get their shit together.  Shameful
> conclusion for anti-white politics.
>
> Finally, for political conclusions...
> 1.  To try to turn everything into a class issue is racist and sexist
> because it is in denial of reality.
> 2.  To claim that class is the real basis of unity is also crap, both
> because class isn't and because the conception of unity involved implies
the
> subordination of people who experience non-class oppression as well.
Class
> becomes, in this reified way, about white, male workers as an object, not
> about the working class as struggle.
> 3.  The importance of labor, Blackness, woman, etc is that each of these,
> understood as negation (long explanation there I suppose), rather than as
> positive identities (as the post-Modernists do), exist as rejections of
> alienated, inhuman social relations.  In struggle, these become the
moments
> of opposition and antagonism to capital in all its manifestations.
> 4.  Therefore, we should reject any positivist notions of any of these
> categories, such as nationalist and Third Worldist identities of race (see
> the Panthers, Stokely Carmichael, NOI and others), feminist identities of
> woman (one need only think of the horrible Gaia-type 'The Goddess is
afoot'
> new age feminism to get the worst), and Social Democratic and Leninist
> notions of the working class (the working class can only achieve trade
union
> consciousness, etc.)
> 5.  We need to rethink what class, gender and race politics in this world
> are, first and foremost in the U.S., since that is where we are.  What we
> thought it was, it isn't.  Neither arguments that involve liberation
> politics past their due date nor weird old-Left/new-Left "Some of my best
> friends are Negroes and they agree with my white politics to my face all
the
> time" white self-delusion will get us there.
>
> Hasta,
> Chris
>
> All comments, criticisms and recommendations that I 'go blow it out my
ass'
> are of course welcome, though the first two are the preferred and
> recommended approach.



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